Systems Biology of Growth & Form
At the Lobo Lab we reverse engineer the mechanisms regulating biological growth and form with an integrated systems approach. We focus on understanding, controlling, and designing the dynamic regulation and signaling that control how organisms grow, metabolize their components, and coordinate the formation of patterns and shapes. We closely integrate new computational methods, mathematical models, and bioinformatics approaches with molecular assays at the bench. We seek a mechanistic understanding of development and regeneration, find therapies for cancer and other diseases, and streamline the application of systems and synthetic biology.
- New preprint explaining how planarians regulate their shape during growth and degrowth posted on bioRxiv.
- Tom Zia and Sanjana Srimath join the lab as undergraduate research assistants. Welcome Tom and Sanjana!
- Prajita Shrestha and Naveed Naqvi join the lab as undergraduate research assistants. Welcome Prajita and Naveed!
- New preprint with a novel framework to design gene regulatory mechanisms producing any given pattern posted on bioRxiv.
We build quantitative mathematical models to understand, analyze, and predict the behavior of biological systems.
We develop computational methods to simulate and infer dynamic models, discover novel elements, and find the best next experiments to test.
We create ontologies, curate databases, and develop expert systems used by both human scientists and artificial intelligence machines.
We study how shapes and patterns are formed from a single cell during development and restored through regeneration.
We seek to understand why and how regulatory mechanisms go awry to produce cancer and other diseases.
We design and optimize regulatory and metabolic networks with desired dynamics and behaviors to solve specific bioengineering problems.